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United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office Decisions |
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You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office Decisions >> eSpeed, Inc (Patent) [2010] UKIntelP o40210 (19 November 2010) URL: http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKIntelP/2010/o40210.html Cite as: [2010] UKIntelP o40210 |
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For the whole decision click here: o40210
Summary
1 The application relates to apparatus for carrying out electronic trading. It comprises workstations and a server interconnected by a communications network. The workstation can, via the communications network, send bid and offer commands to the server for storage there and for distribution to the other work stations. A bid or offer command stored at the server may subsequently be changed by the relevant user sending, from his workstation an appropriate change command to the server. The workstation can also send trading commands, via the communications network, to the server. When a trading command is received by the server, it executes a trade on the basis of that trading command and the value specified in the bid or offer command to which it relates.
2 The applicant has recognised that signals sent over communications networks inherently suffer network delays and as a consequence, by the time the trading command has traversed the network, the value of the bid or offer to which it relates may have changed from the original value, on the basis of which the trading command was generated, to a new value. In consequence, the trade will be executed on the basis of the wrong value. The claimed invention provides a means for preventing such incorrect execution by notifying a trader to the fact that the value of a bid or offer has changed and provides the trader with an opportunity to submit, modify or cancel the trade command. In this way, the trader is safeguarded against trading on an erroneous price.
3 The Hearing Officer applied the Aerotel/Macrossan 4 step test and found that the contribution made by the invention fell solely within excluded matter and related to a business method implement through a computer program. The Hearing Officer did not agree with the applicant that the invention addressed a technical problem associated with user/system/network delays and found the contribution to be non-technical.
